New iPhones: Bigger screens, more expensive
Tech giant unveils $1,099 XS Max phone, watch with heart ECG feature
After finally hitting the onegrand price tag last year with its iPhone X, Apple on Wednesday pushed even further, nudging the starting price on its new super-screened iPhone XS
Max to $1,099, the most it has ever asked people to pay for an iPhone.
Apple doesn’t think the price hike will matter to consumers.
“Just a hundred dollars more,” Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller told the crowd Wednesday at the Apple Park head-
quarters’ annual autumn product launch. In other words, if you can spend $1,000 on a phone, you can spend $1,099.
This most-expensive-ever iPhone was one of three new models in the spotlight: Coming with 64, 256 or 512 gigabytes of storage, the iPhone XR will start at $749, and be available for pre-ordering on Oct. 19 and shipping on Oct. 26. The iPhone XS starts at $999 and the XS Max, well, that’s the super expensive one. Both the iPhone XS and the iPhone XS Max are available for preordering Friday and will start shipping Sept. 21.
At an event that felt a bit subdued compared with those in the past, Wednesday’s launch focused mainly on the iPhone and the new Apple Watch Series 4. The same themes played out for both product lines: bigger screens, including the iPhones’ surfaces stretched ”edge to edge”; more processing power, featuring the A12 Bionic, which Apple calls “the smartest, most powerful chip ever in a smartphone”; and perennial upgrades such as longer battery life, more case colors and more sophisticated camera features, including the ability to adjust the depth of field in a photo.
The highlight of the event was the unveiling of the new iPhone XS and its 5.8-inch diagonal screen; the iPhone XS Max, which comes with a whopping 6½inch diagonal screen; and the iPhone XR, with a 6.1inch liquid retina display that covers the entire front of the smartphone.
“Today, we’re going to take iPhone X to the next level,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told a crowd of analysts, Apple employees, bloggers and
journalists gathered in the underground Steve Jobs Theater at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino. “(It’s) by far the most advanced iPhone we have ever created.”
The event comes 11 years after the launch of the first iPhone and one year after Apple staged the show for the first time at its new spaceship-like campus in Cupertino. Emceed by Cook, who took over the duties after the 2011 death of co-founder Steve Jobs, the launch is part tech rally, part brunch bash, an houror-two-long smorgasbord of product updates.
With each year’s event, starting in 2005 when they were held in San Francisco, Apple famously announces with great fanfare the latest cool tricks its engineers have dreamed up, from Siri
in 2011 to Apple Pay in 2014. Last year, those surprises included the 10-year anniversary iPhone X, the removal of the home button, and Face ID technology that enables a user to unlock a phone using facial-recognition magic.
The top billing, of course, went to the new iPhone models, the newest in a product line that generates roughly two-thirds of Apple’s revenue and spurs customers to go out and use other Apple devices and services, such as Apple Pay and iCloud storage. iPhone sales helped push Apple’s market value above $1 trillion last month for the first time ever.
The new phones come at a time of red-hot competition with other phone makers trying to get their devices into the hands of
smartphone-loving fans around the globe. Last month, Samsung began selling its $1,000 Galaxy Note 9 with bigger-than-ever specs and tons of software goodies. Google is expected to unveil its newest Pixel smartphones next month.
Apple’s big news comes, as it usually does, in September, an opportune time to unleash new products on the world as consumers are herded into the holiday shopping season.
In addition to the iPhones, Apple introduced a new upgrade to its Apple Watch, with two new models of the device. Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, showed off features of the Apple Watch Series 4, including displays that are more than 30 percent larger than the prior models, the capability to call emergency services automatically when it detects a person is falling, and the ability to take an electrocardiogram of a person’s heart.
That last feature seemed to wow the crowd, which broke out in loud applause.
“Apple has already gotten into health with its heart studies as well as sensors on the Apple Watch,” said analyst Tim Bajarin with Creative Strategies. “Adding the ECG feature is very significant, especially for those concerned about heart health.”
Bajarin says a huge health concern for many people is atrial fibrillation, or AFib, which is a quivering or irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia) that can lead to blood clots, stroke and other heart-related complications.
“AFib can be detected by
a solid ECG, which can also show something wrong, indicating other serious health problems,” he said. “The fact that you can now do that on a device right on your wrist is a very big deal, especially with people who have heart-health concerns.”
At least 2.7 million Americans are living with AFib.
Williams said the Apple Watch Series 4 will start at $399, or $499 with cellular capability. Orders for the new Apple Watch will start Friday, and the watch will be available Sept. 21.
Apple has faced some challenges this year, including possible threats to its bottom line from President Donald Trump’s proposed $200 billion tariffs on China.
Earlier this week, Bank of America Merrill Lynch published a note on Trump’s plan, suggesting that the tariffs may force Apple to raise the prices of some of its products in the United States, including the Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod and Beats headphones, in order to recoup lost revenue. The analysts said a 25 percent tariff “could be materially demand destructive” and estimated that about a third of the $26 billion that Apple earns from those products comes from the United States.
Loup Ventures’ Gene Munster, a longtime Apple analyst, said he didn’t see as big of a negative impact. “If passed, we believe these tariffs could lower the profitability of Apple Watch and AirPods by 10-20 percent, resulting in just under a 1 percent negative impact on Apple’s profits” in fiscal year 2019, Munster wrote Monday, suggesting the tariffs will “go away” in just two years.